And the Winner Is...

Share.

Comicon weeded out the best of the best at Yu-Gi-Oh World Championship 2004.

By Adam Tierney

Not many people can say they're the best in the world at something. But 13-year-old Ryon Peyton from Colonia Beach, VA can. Concluding a series of duels that began earlier this year, Ryon walked home this weekend as the world champion in Yu-Gi-Oh! GBA gaming after beating out thousands of contestants from the US, Europe and Japan for the slot.

2004 marks the second year for the Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship Tournament, which pits gamers across the globe in duels (both digital and with cards) in order to be crowned the best. "The Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise is an important cornerstone in Konami's outstanding video game library, " said Mr. Kazumi Kitaue, Chief Executive Officer of Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc. "Through these tournaments, we extend the reach of the Yu-Gi-Oh! brand, create broader awareness for the product and give fans of the series the opportunity to meet one another and share their experiences." In fact this year's Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship Tournament 2004 GBA game, used in the competition was essentially tailor-made specifically for the tournament.

Duels were fought at over 600 Toys R Us stores in the US, the winners of which had their points tallied and the top 15 were flown to San Diego for last Friday's semi-final US tournament, held at the annual Comicon International. 1 wildcard slot was left open to attendees of the con, and over the course of the afternoon, 16 were whittled down to 4 contestants who would move onto the finals. Every entrant in the tournament received a copy of the Sengenjin card, available only through competition.

Sunday saw the second annual Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship Tournament held at the Anaheim Convention Center, right next to Disneyland. Taking up the entire convention center, hundreds of Yu-Gi-Oh! fans and their parents (many of whom seemed as thrilled as their kids) were treated to trivia games, matches with the pros, trailers and posters of the upcoming film, booths for Viz comics and Upper Deck (who distributes cards in the US) and hundreds of gaming tables for Yu-Gi-Oh! enthusiasts to chat, duel and trade. Perhaps most amazing was the amount of parental involvement at the show. Yu-Gi-Oh! has been widely praised for its emphasis on strategy over aggression, and to see so many parents not just taking their kids to the show, but engaging them in duels, watching them compete like nervous soccer dads and answering trivia questions for Yu-Gi-Oh! prizes was definitely something to behold.

Although the two types of Yu-Gi-Oh! games are nearly identical in terms of gameplay, Sunday would see the crowning of two champions - one for the card game, and one for the digital GBA game. On the GBA side of the tournament, the four US gamers were joined by two from Japan and six from Europe, who dueled in a series of battles until ultimately only two remained - 14-year-old Pere Torrellas Salietti from Spain and 13-year-old Ryon Peyton from Colonia Beach, VA.

As the duel began, displayed for the crowd via a big screen behind the boys, cheers and jeers ran as vocal as the most intense sports games. Pere took the first match of three, with Ryon regaining his ground to win match two. The final match was in constant flux between hushed silence and explosive applause from the spectators, who knew the cards so well that the image of each creature on the screen triggered the same response a home run might at a ball game. At the end of it, Ryon Peyton had two incredibly strong duels and was victorious over Pere 2-1.

Mr. Kazumi Kitaue then came out to present the top four winners (who also included Patrick Dicks from the US and Junichi Natsume from Japan) with commemorative plaques modeled after the stone tablets from the Yu-Gi-Oh! cartoon, as well as the rarest dueling cards in existence. Pere, Patrick and Junichi each received a card for Meteo the Matchless, only six of which have ever been pressed. And Ryon received the rarest card of all: Ulevo, one of only two copies in the world.